


Wait Harbor, Wait

by salvadore



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-07
Updated: 2011-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:13:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eduardo and Mark are marine biologists looking for marine turtles. Facebook is a network that would help biologists track this endangered species.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait Harbor, Wait

((INDIA))

The ship is never quiet. There is always someone wandering across the deck - rain boots making thundering, stomping sounds on the wood. And the pipes in the ship are old enough that whenever they are in use (and they are never not in use) they creak and groan as though they are in pain if they could feel pain. The bunk beds in the individual cabins are held up by metal hinges and washers and bolts so, whenever the waves make the ship shift, the beds shift and creak as well. To make matters worse the mattresses squeak under any bodily shifting. Mark's mattress squeaks under him as he kicks his legs and tries to roll over onto his stomach.

Even if the ship wasn't too loud for Mark to drop off to sleep, sleep would still be elusive. His mind just keeps running over and over the events of the day, but specifically the heartbroken look on Eduardo's face. Mark has no illusions. He knows exactly how he and Eduardo went from a seamless, instant (and maybe way too easy) friendship to Mark wandering into their shared cabin to find Eduardo had moved out. The top was stripped of sheets (and really, Mark wonders as he slides deeper into his sleeping bag, why someone would bring sheets and a duvet on a ship) and the pictures of Eduardo's family have been pulled from the wall.

The most significant absence for Mark, though, was that Eduardo's calender was no longer hanging on the back of the door. He feels stupid and sentimental, but he had grown as excited as Eduardo about the diminishing days on the calender. It was a countdown to Hanukkah and when Eduardo was going to come back to Dobbs Ferry with Mark to celebrate the holiday. It was still months away but -

Mark buries his head under his pillow and tries to smother the thought away. Its not as if that matters now.

  
  
((NOVEMBER))

Mark doesn't think that he made the wrong decision, cutting Eduardo out of the project, but the memory of meeting Eduardo makes him question it. It makes Mark feel stupid, being so emotional over a rational decision. Eduardo may love turtles and the ocean (and the weather to a much larger degree) and even though he was excited by Mark's business proposal, Eduardo was wrong for Mark's project. The only thing more wrong was that Mark had asked him in the first place.

He should never have asked Eduardo in the first place. Mark had spent the months since he'd met Eduardo frowning over his new friend's (and wasn't that unexpected) weird drive to make his father proud.

His father, Mr. Saverin, was a business man of no small stature who expected his son to be the same.

The same son who was very much in love with weather patterns and how they impacted the migratory patterns of marine turtles. And, until recently, Mark Zuckerberg.

  
  
((ECHO))

They, Mark and Eduardo, met their first day on board. The ship's captain was leading a mandatory orientation for all of the members of the expedition no matter if it was their first or fourth time. Mark thought it was redundant, especially since the project's director had given the same rules and regulations at the airport before they flew to the South American port town where the ship was waiting in the harbor.

These same rules had been loosely defined on the sign-up packet for the expedition. A list that Mark had scanned then torn free from the important pages and tossed out four months earlier.

Mark was seated at the farthest point from the captain, against the railing and watching the waves lick against the ships hull. He was thinking about the waves and tuning the orientation out. For a moment, Mark closed his eyes and when he opened them again it was to the sight of a thin, harried young man running up the wooden ramp. The young man was wearing rolled up khakis and a faded blue button-up. It was highly probable, Mark thought, that the shirt had been bought in that faded color as opposed to an organic bleaching from too much time in the sun. Except, the young man was very tan and naturally so.

As Mark thought all of these things he didn't think about his own invisibility at that moment. So, the first time he and Eduardo officially met was when Eduardo tripped over him in his rush to give the coordinator his paperwork. Landing on Mark with one hand out toward the deck and an elbow digging into Mark's side, the first thing Eduardo Saverin ever did in their acquaintance was to literally knock the air out of Mark

  
  
((ECHO))

Mark wakes up from the memory of Eduardo's sheepish smile and outstretched hand to the sound of frustrated grunts and wheels dragging on the wood. Blinking up at the wooden paneling that made up the bottom of the top bunk, Mark lies still and listens to the other person struggle with the metal door, trying to keep it open as they dragged it into the room. Its the same as that first day, when Eduardo had tried to roll his baggage into the room even though the loose swinging door made what should've been a simple task nearly impossible.

A hiss of a sigh cuts through the room and, finally, the door swings shut behind the other occupant with the bag inside the door. Mark turns his head just a fraction and watches Eduardo drag his fingers through his hair.

“I know you're awake," Eduardo says exasperatedly.

“Why are you back?" Mark's voice sounds flat in the quiet room, but in his mind Mark's voice sounds small. It makes him want to make his own exasperated noises. His decision wasn't personal and, at the very least, how Eduardo feels shouldn't matter and his own feelings for Eduardo shouldn't matter.

Mark's starting to think that maybe life isn't as cut-and-dry as he would like it to be.

Eduardo's voice cuts through his thoughts when he says, “There aren't any other quarters. So we're stuck with each other,” by way of explanation. Mark lies back and listens to Eduardo climb the rickety ladder at the end of the bed and throw himself over the short metal railing. The mattress squeaks and then the room plunges into silence, leaving Mark and Eduardo separately stewing.

  
  
((DELTA))

“Tartaruga marinha," Eduardo says.

“Marine turtle. In Portuguese,” he explains.

And Mark listens, watching the sunset and waves around Eduardo's profile while they sit with their legs hanging off of the deck, each of them straddling a vertical railing. Both of them are leaning their arms on one of lower wrapping railing, Eduardo with his chin on his forearms and Mark with his chin in his hands. Eduardo's eyes aren't brown in the sunlight, but instead they are bright. The sun glints off of Eduardo's sunglasses, the light shining down into Mark's eyes from where they are sitting on top of Eduardo's head. In combination with the shine of the sun glinting off of the rolling ocean waves make Mark's eyes hurt, but he doesn't look away from Eduardo.

When Eduardo swallows, readying more words, Mark can see his Adam's apple bobbing.

“I had a cat, when I was little. I named it tartaruga.”

“You named your cat TURTLE?”

Eduardo chuckles and drops his head so his forehead is resting on his arms. Its not a conscious action on Mark's part to reach out and snatch up Eduardo's glasses from his head before they can fall into the sea. But Eduardo smiles at him as though it had been both conscious and thoughtful.

“I always loved the ocean,” Eduardo sighs. Then he falls back against the deck, sprawling his arms out behind him and pointing his toes out toward the horizon. Mark slips the sunglasses onto his face to hide the way he is staring at his project partner and cabin mate. His fingers itch for his computer, and his graphs of migratory patterns. Mark wants to immerse himself in his (soon to be) revolutionary tracking system.

But he wants to lie out in the sun and listen to Eduardo romanticize his reasoning for devoting a year to tracking marine turtles just as much. This moment and this contradiction is why Mark tells Eduardo about his plans, and propositions him as the business end. It's unlikely they will make any money, but Eduardo will already be grinning by the time Mark says, “The CFO, Wardo.”

  
  
((YANKEE))

Mark was not born with an interest in the ocean. If anything, he was probably destined to do something with computers, maybe create a network that would connect the world. He might have ended up moving to Palo Alto and, in this train of though, he might never have finished college. Maybe he would have gone to Harvard only to drop out. But that's not what happened.

What happened was that Mark moved into a dorm suite and, without meaning to, became friends with Christopher Hughes, self-proclaimed activist for the world. Not that there is anything wrong with that, except for the times when Chris calls Mark frantically in the middle of a coding tear begging Mark to bring the term paper that is sitting on the coffee table to his class is really annoying.

Grudgingly, Mark had agreed. Grunting out an affirmative to Chris as he pulled the phone from his ear when Chris started shrieking about immediacy and importance "I can't fail, Mark!" - Mark hangs up on him, then tries to remember which classroom he needs to find.

When Mark had shuffled into the lecture hall, one hand stuffed into his hoodie pocket and the other clutching the packet of papers, he hadn't expected a floor to ceiling projection of a whale in motion. Mesmerized, Mark shoved Chris' paper into his lap as he slumped into the seat beside him. Chris stared at him, agape, and with a protest on his lips. But, as Mark looked more and more engrossed, Chris started laughing. Quietly at first but after a while he was laughing bodily and drawing the attention of the guest speaker.

So, when Mark and Eduardo are unpacking in their cabin on the ships two years, three months, and a handful of days and hours after that first lecture and Eduardo asks him, "why" Mark mentions the whales.

Then, he adds, “But I like marine turtles better. They are, by nature, fairly solitary except for when they are migrating to their breeding ground. And even then. The children are left after the eggs are left in the birthing beaches to be self-sufficient.”

Mark blushes and ducks his head as he rambling draws short on a stuttering breath. He doesn't want to see Eduardo psychoanalyzing him. It had happened before, classmates drawing comparisons between the hard-shelled creatures and their callous classmate.

Except Eduardo is smiling when Mark finally, hesitantly looks up. Eduardo's eyes are bright and his hair is a mess from trying to set-up his sheets on the top bunk. He is leaning against the bunk bed as he looks at Mark with a dopey grin on his face. Mark smiles at his feet as his cheeks get hotter.

(maybe, mark will think later, that was when he started falling in love with wardo)

  
  
((OSCAR))

Mark sleeps very little. He wants to sleep, each days work under the heat of the sun sends him back to his quarters aching with exhaustion.

But at night, he wakes up each time to the sound of Eduardo snorting or whining abruptly before returning the soft ebb and tide of snoring that Mark has grown accustomed to hearing.

Mark lies awake staring at the woodwork of the top of the bunk and listening to Eduardo sleep and shift about in his sleep. He feels a dark, ugly weight in his stomach. Part of it is feeling voyeuristic and a guilt for the snorting and whining that he can't explain.

One night lying awake and listening drives Mark from his bed and up the stairs that are at the end of the corridor. A cloud cover is the first thing Mark sees when he makes it to the above deck world. He breathes in the crisp air and can smell the in coming rain. Humidity immediately begins to cling to his skin, a warning that he and his boxer clad body ought to return below deck.

He doesn't. He holds up one of the railings, staring at the trailing currents behind the boat until they are obscured by rain drops dotting the surface. Even then, Mark just sinks to the deck and stares at the water as his clothes become soaked with water. Wind whips about and Mark sinks his head against the railing.

It is the closest he comes to a breakdown.

When he comes back to himself, Mark drags himself back down the stairs to where Eduardo is waiting with his duvet and a worried set to his eyebrows.

“Oh Mark,” Eduardo murmurs as he wraps the blanket around Mark. Eduardo must have assumed that Mark was out of it, Mark thinks, as he allows himself to be seated on the bed and his limbs rubbed with the blanket until they are warm once more.

  
  
((UNIFORM))

The expedition ends just as it was always meant to. All of the participants are packed by the time the ship is docked.

All of the participants but Mark. Mark believes that besides the regular crew he is the only one left exiting the ship, until Eduardo appears. He catches Mark's arm before he can exit the gangplank.

Eduardo's face is hard set with lowered brows and his lips thin from how hard he has them pressed together. Mark stares at these small details, taking them in with the same concentration that he uses to memorize the unique swirls and grooves that make the patterns of turtle shells. He swallows, then meets Eduardo's eyes. For the first time since he met Eduardo, Mark cannot read the emotion in the brown irises and the lines of his eyelids.

Mark's fingers twitch and, before he can think the motion through, his arms begin to rise. His hands seek out Eduardo's skin, but Mark gets them under control and dropped to his sides before he can screw this up further.

Then Eduardo speaks, words biting and demanding as he asks rationale and reasoning of Mark.

“Why did you fire me, Mark?”

Mark thinks, _screw it_ and _now or never_. He lifts his hands to Eduardo's jaw line and slides his fingers along the line of the bone. The tips of his middle and pointer fingers brush Eduardo's sideburns. Mark runs his thumbs along the still soft skin of Eduardo's skin, appreciating Eduardo's need to shave every day they were on board.

Surging up onto his toes, Mark chastely presses his lips to Eduardo's. He hovers a breath away and then presses in for a second kiss that lingers longer. Eduardo's lips are soft, not like Mark's wind chapped lips. Mark finally, slowly, starts to pull back when Eduardo doesn't respond to the kiss.

Settled back on his heels, Mark runs one thumb along the shell of Eduardo's ear and answers. His tone is confident, but far more gentle than he is known for.

“You weren't right for the job, Wardo. And the project, the turtles, shouldn't suffer for that.”

As an after thought he adds, “You will do something else.”

Then Mark turns away and walks down the gangplank, his duffel slapping against the back of his knees as he goes.

(Mark tries not to expect anything. Certainly not Eduardo showing up in Dobbs Ferry for Hanukkah)

  


***

  


INDIA ALPHAMIKE HOTELECHOROMEOECHO FOX-TROTOSCARROMEO YANKEEOSCARUNIFORM


End file.
